The new IPA

On a sunny January morning, shortly after Great Notion Brewing opened the doors to its Portland, Oregon, taproom for the first time, it had a visitor. He was an employee from a brewery a few miles away who had come to sample the newcomer’s wares, and he chose a pint of RIPE, a 7% American IPA. But when Great Notion co-founder and brewer James Dugan set the beer before him, the visitor seemed incredulous. He lifted the glass high in the air, squinting at it. “I just want you to know,” the man told Dugan, “This style of beer is not going to fly in Portland.” He went on to tell Dugan that Great Notion needed to work on its filtration or no one would be willing to buy its ales.

The problem? The IPA Dugan poured for him was cloudy.

Now, cloudiness absolutely can be a sign of a low-quality beer. If there are issues with yeast and its fermentation, certain adjuncts or, yes, filtration, tiny particles remain suspended in a beer, murking it up and contributing off-putting flavors. But, Dugan says, that’s not what had happened here. RIPE, along with most of the IPAs he produces at Great Notion, is an example of a new permutation of the most popular style in the country—one with less bitterness and (gasp!) a hazy glow—that’s poised to become IPA’s new ideal.

There have always been variations in IPAs, of course: Some shine and shimmer in translucent gold while others have a deep, caramel hue; some wallop the nose with citrus and pine needles whereas others caress it with soft melon and mango. But this new breed of IPA differs from its forebears in more meaningful ways.

First, the most obvious: It’s cloudy. Far from the superclear IPAs that you could read a book through, this offshoot sports haze that ranges from early morning fog to extra-pulp Tropicana. This “glow” isn’t a bug, however; it’s a feature. Brewers add massive amounts of hops to beers late in the brewing process—while they’re fermenting, usually—that packs them with haze-causing compounds called polyphenols. When they choose not to filter the beer completely, these compounds remain suspended in the liquid, fogging it up.

But cloudiness isn’t the only departure these IPAs take from the norm. “To me, it’s always been about the yeast,” says Connor Casey, founder of Cellarmaker Brewing Co. in San Francisco. “The yeast sweetens the hops and gives these fruity, peachy notes that work really well with them.” While many examples of classically bright, bitter IPA use an American yeast strain that lends a dry finish and contributes few fruity flavors, this new IPA is most often brewed with a modified British ale strain that’s like the devil-may-care cousin from across the pond: It eats less sugar (leaving the beer sweeter), throws off a ton of fruity flavor and sticks around inside a beer well after the party’s over. In this new breed of IPA, bitterness is of secondary importance (Great Notion’s imperial IPA, Juice Box, clocks in at just 60 IBUs) and grains that can contribute additional haziness and body, like oats and wheat, are welcome. In an effort to avoid any loss of hop aroma and flavor, many brewers are choosing to cut short the several days usually allotted for yeast particles to settle out of a beer, and some are skipping any form of filtration altogether—appearances be damned.

“I don’t really understand the importance of serving a crystal-clear pint of beer,” Dugan says. “What’s more important to me is serving a beer that, when it’s put in front of you, the aromas of mango and papaya and pineapple are just jumping out of the glass at your nose. If you close your eyes and it tastes amazing, why worry about how it looks?”

Why, indeed? As a quick glance at any current list of top-ranked IPAs will show, most beer geeks (save a few staunch holdouts) have embraced IPA’s newfound opacity. Eight of the 10 best-rated India pale ales on RateBeer, as of this writing, are part of this new breed of cloudy, flavorful brew; that number jumps to nine on BeerAdvocate. The Alchemist, Trillium, Tree House and other breweries that specialize in IPAs of this nature can hardly brew them quickly enough to keep up with consumer demand. Which is sort of the point—even the bitterest, brightest, West Coastiest IPAs lose some hop character during the days spent in bright tanks or during filtration; the natural evolution of a style defined by its freshness and hop character requires that brewers skip these steps, crafting their beers to get from kettle to keg in a shorter time than almost any other beer. As a result, they’re often as fresh and flavorful as IPAs get. Which brings us back to Great Notion’s nay-saying RIPE drinker. After listening to his arguments against hazy beer, Dugan refunded the dude’s pint but gave him one directive. “I told him, ‘Go out back, and close your eyes, and sit in the sun and drink that beer.’” The cynic did, and after he finished his pint, he returned inside and apologized. His judgment had been clouded. The IPA had been, too.

Four To Try:

The Alchemist Heady Topper
“I am not reinventing the wheel of IPA,” Alchemist brewer John Kimmich says. “The British wrote the song of IPA; I’m just making a cover song.” Give the man a Grammy; this insanely popular, intensely resinous imperial IPA brewed in Vermont has a hop character that blends liquefied marijuana and grass blades with sugar-dusted orange slices atop a crackery malt base. Consistently ranked among the top beers in the world, it’s considered by many the beer that forecasted the cloudy IPA trend.

Tree House Julius
The nods to a certain citrus fruit in this IPA from Massachusetts aren’t coincidental; the peel and juice of oranges are everywhere in the aroma, filling out notes of freshly mown grass. A smoothielike flavor leads with more orange andwheatgrass, while soft marmaladeand onion jam slide into pulpy tanginess at the swallow.

Maine Beer II
India Pale Ales and double IPAs aren’t the only hop-forward beers becoming clouded. Beer II is a 4.7% session IPA that swells to the nose with a gorgeous aroma of onion, dried mango slices and honeysuckle. Delicate straw like and sweet tropical hop flavors lead each sip; dried orange peel emerges and relinquishes to a faintly bitter, remarkably even finish.

9 Comments

Based on trade demand I think most people across the country are starting to understand that hazy IPAs offer great flavors and while West Coast IPAs aren’t going anywhere it’s great to see a whole new layer of category of the style develop and become widely accepted.

Cloudy beer is nothing new, “London murky” beers have been around for years as have Belgians. Unfined (unfiltered) beer leaves yeast, proteins and hop oils in suspension which add to the flavor and mouthfeel. Hefe’s are one good example. Sorry but an IPA with low bitterness and high malt to me is not an IPA regardless of what you call it.

I recall a wonderful NorCal (South Bay Area) IPA from the early 1990s (was it ?, too long ago to remember) called HOPPY FACE which was a totally unfiltered mega IPA (for its time). It was wonderful and the Brewer made the exact same argument then.

Most IPAs I’ve drank are slightly hazy. Some filter to remove it. The hoppy bitterness is akin to West Coast IPAs. The East Coast brews have always been somewhat tamer. Heady Topper is a fine, albeit bland to my west coast palate, milder IPA. I’ve brewed a clone of Topper and it appealed to my non-beer enthusiast friends. But when I brew a Pliny clone, only the serious aficionados partake. I’m not going to say these aren’t IPAs, but they are not West Coast IPAs.

IPA stands for something, it has meaning, it is a defined thing and no beer was ever clearer than that which traveled 90 days in wooden casks tossing with the waves and agitated all the way; twice crossing the equator and going through a myriad of temperatures before being offloaded from a sailing ship and set upon stillage to settle for 3 days before tapping. Thomas Hardy wrote of the amber golden nectar of the gods as clear the sky following a rain, so this abomination of a beer style may be delicious to some, but it is in NO WAY IPA.

I think we need to be careful here. Cloudy is OK with a controlled and measured yeast count. However I’d suggest that most of these breweries producing cloudy beers don’t even know what a haemocytometer is!

I have seen so called ‘cloudy IPAs’ with a centimeter of yeast in the bottom and actual hop particulate. They are either lazy, incompetent and/or using the fact they haven’t a centrifuge/filter as an excuse to market their beer as cloudy!

Too much yeast in a beer will certainly detract from hop flavor, alter mouth feel, and autolysis could result in a potential infection and destroy head retention.

Cloudy IPA will only work if drunk fresh and the yeast count is controlled and kept around 1-2million cells/ml

Don’t believe the hype! and lets not even bother talking about ‘bio-transformation’